Chelsea 2-0 Southampton: 5 Talking Points

Chelsea are into the FA Cup final for the 2nd year running. The Blues secured a 2-0 win over Southampton to seal a date with Manchester United in the FA Cup Final on 19th May.

Olivier Giroud scored a Messi-esque goal to give Chelsea the lead early in the 2nd half before Alvaro Morata scored late in the game to break all Southampton hopes.

Here are the 5 talking points from the game:

#5 Conte's last chance to save his job?

Antonio Conte and Jose Mourinho were having a go at each other at the start of 2018. The feud got a little personal and people started to make assumptions that the Manchester United boss had got into the Chelsea counterpart's head.

The Blues were not able to get results and that made things worse for Conte. He was favourite to be the next Premier League manager to be sacked. However, Chelsea board has stayed put with the manager so far but the FA Cup Final might be the final chance for him to save his job.

#2 Unlucky Southampton fail to do a Wigan

Oops!

Southampton are on the verge of getting relegated from the Premier League. The Saints have very little chance of surviving and were hoping to head to the Championship with the FA Cup.

Their hopes of doing that ended after a dismal performance today vs Chelsea. They had no reply to Chelsea and were sitting back and trying to play route 1 stuff. (more on that in another slide).

The Saints are 4 points behind Swansea City with 4 games to go. The two sides meet on 8th May and that match will well and truly decide the future of the two clubs in the Premier League.

#3 Antonio Conte's puzzling substitutions

What's on Conte's mind?

1-0 up, Willian leading the Chelsea attacks and all of a sudden, Conte decides to take him off. What surprised everyone watching, even more, is that he brought on Tiemoue Bakayoko and not Pedro or Morata.

Chelsea were playing with a 3-5-2 formation following that substitution. Hazard joined Giroud upfront and Fabregas was playing as the CAM.

12 minutes later, Conte decides that the new formation isn't working and brings on Pedro for Fabregas. The change resulted in Chelsea heading back to 3-4-3 and dominating the game once again.

Morata then came on for Giroud in the 80th minute and sealed the game for Chelsea with a header. The goal came just 86 seconds after the Spaniard came on!

#2 Route 1 fails big time for Southampton

The only time fans saw Shane Long

Mark Hughes failed to inspire this team despite having a good outing vs Chelsea last weekend. They were dominating The Blues in all departments but a catastrophic 8 minutes changed the game around.

For some reason, Hughes did not go in with a similar plan today. The Saints were sitting back and waiting to attack Chelsea on the counter.

Conte was all prepared for this and had Gary Cahill and Antonio Rudiger in their own half all the time. Shane Long was not getting any service and when he did think that he's finally got past one Chelsea defender, the other came and cleared the ball away.

#1 Signing Giroud has saved Chelsea's season

What a goal!

Olivier Giroud has rescued Chelsea yet again! The Frenchman was on the scoresheet for The Blues – this time not as a substitute!

The £18 million signing has proved that he worth every penny already. Had it not been for him, Chelsea would not have broken the deadlock today nor would that have collected so many points at the death in the Premier League.

With Giroud's goal helping Chelsea win, it's two players who left Arsenal in January that have guided their new team make it into the FA Cup final!